Sludge: A waste or renewable source for energy and resources recovery?

Utilization of waste sludge as a renewable resource for energy recovery is the appropriate solution of how to manage the continuously increasing waste sludge generation effectively in order to meet stringent environmental quality standards, and at the same time, how to sustain the supply of reliable and affordable energy for our future generations and ourselves. The valuable characteristics of sludge, including high energy and nutrient content, with the stringent criteria of sludge disposal, driving the environmental engineers and scientist to change their standpoint to considering sludge as a viable resource of energy instead of a waste. It may be an important move towards the development of a sustainable energy solution to fulfill present and future energy requirements and thus reduce the dependency on non-renewable resource. Thus, this review discusses about the type of resources that can be recovered from waste sludge and, conventional and emerging methods used to convert the sludge into valuable resources. Moreover, the major factors involved in the process, stage of application, advantages and possible drawbacks of the methods are also discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.